


the endless open road

by Nokomis



Series: when the dust settles [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-07
Updated: 2013-07-07
Packaged: 2017-12-18 00:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/873695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two weeks after the dust cleared to reveal the broken, ruined world they now inhabit, Scott tried to go find Stiles. He convinced Isaac and Allison to go with him, loaded up in Allison’s car and drove west. They came back three days later, exhausted, bruised and with ghosts in their eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the endless open road

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr [here](http://nokomiss.tumblr.com/post/54760588634/the-endless-open-road). You do not have to read 'when the dust settles' for this to make sense.

Allison drives. The slow path through town, weaving around abandoned cars and unidentifiable, dust-covered pieces of wreckage, only serves to make Scott more anxious, more determined to find Stiles, but Allison doesn’t speed up. She takes her time and gets them out safely.

 

She takes slow, calming breaths as they pass the school, as they pass the cemetery her mother is buried in. The dust is lays thick on the headstones like snow.

 

Isaac is laying in the back, hand draped over his eyes, one knee propped up, like he’s napping. He’s not. His heart is pounding like a terrified rabbit.

 

Allison keeps cutting her eyes to the rear view mirror. Scott touches her hand lightly. 

 

They’re going to succeed.

*

Before:

 

The pack has coalesced around Scott in a way that makes him uncomfortable — Derek has the experience, but something in him has seemed to wither away as the world slowly disintegrates around them — and he needs his best friend. He needs Stiles to help him come up with a plan…

 

He needs Stiles.

 

Scott has to get out there and find him. He never thought of his best friend as fragile, but then the dust came.

 

"He’s gone." Isaac doesn’t look at him, just stares out the window. The view from Derek’s loft has turned into an advantage; they can see when a dust cloud is approaching. They’re protected, here above the masses.

 

"I have to find him," Scott insists. Stiles is gone and everyone else is just accepting it. Allison watches them like a bird of prey.

 

"It’s not safe out there." Isaac’s voice is soft and dangerous. “You can’t go alone."

 

"He’s not." Allison stands. 

*

The road leading out of Beacon Hills winds out of the forests and up into the mountains, they’re several hours down it before Scott realizes something’s wrong.

 

There are no abandoned cars, no debris, no dust.

 

"What’s going on?" he whispers, heart suddenly jack-hammering in his chest.

 

Allison grits her teeth as she clenches the wheel, her knuckles going white. Isaac sits up, eyes suddenly viciously alert.

 

"We’ve passed the same mile marker twice," she says. The hum of the motor grows louder as she speeds up. “Three times."

 

They’ve been driving for hours.

 

"The clocks," Isaac says. “They all say three-thirty."

 

It had been three-thirty when they passed the Beacon Hills city limits.

*

Eventually, Allison rolls to a stop beside the mile-marker. The landscape is generic and unchanging in all directions.

 

"What do we do?" she asks numbly. Her hands still grip the wheel.

 

Scott doesn’t know. Turn around, he wants to say, but he’s afraid of what might happen if they do. 

 

"What can we do?" Isaac murmurs. He’s leaning between their seats, and the look he shares with Allison is intimate. Makes Scott feel strangely invisible, right up until they turn the look on him. His breath catches in his throat, and for a second all he can see is the heat and trust and desperation.

 

"Sleep," Scott says. “Sleep, and come at it fresh tomorrow."

 

If there is a tomorrow; the sun is as bright and high in the sky as it had been when they left, even though Scott can feel the weight of the day in his bones and the heaviness of his eyes.

 

The tank is nearly empty. They really have no choice.

*

They have two options: sleep outside, under the blistering sun and gaze of the unknown that they all know is out there, or in the car, cramped and tangled together.

 

Comfort is a small thing to sacrifice. Allison is the one to suggest watches; her training has prepared her for the strange world they now inhabit in ways that their transformations have not. 

 

Isaac volunteers to stay awake first. He climbs out of the car, sits on the hood, long limbs loose and relaxed as he stares into the horizon. Allison is the one who suggests they share the backseat; Scott leaning against the door while Allison rests her head on his side. She tucks her arm over her face, shielding her eyes from the brightness, and her breath evens out quickly, trusting Isaac fully with her safety.

 

It takes Scott longer to allow his eyes to drift shut; his instincts tell him that he should be the one watching, should be the one protecting.

 

It’s Allison who shakes him awake, telling him it’s his watch. He blearily opens his eyes. Isaac is tucked against him, where Allison had lain as he drifted off. His knees are tucked up tight against his body, like a child hiding from the thunder, and Scott unthinkingly presses a kiss to the top of his head before carefully reclaiming his limbs from the tangle.

 

Allison lays her bow and arrow on the floor as he climbs out of the car, takes position settled on the trunk of the car, watching the horizon. He keeps glancing back, watching as Allison tucks herself against Isaac, rakes her fingers through his hair as her eyes flutter closed.

 

There is only silence beyond them, no matter how much Scott strains his werewolf hearing.

*

"Do you think he’s one of the disappeared?" Isaac isn’t trying to be cruel, but the words rip through Scott like a blade.

 

"No." Scott can’t even think that. 

 

Allison takes his hand, rubs her thumb reassuringly against his. “He’s probably figured out a way to get into town, and is waiting on us right now."

 

She doesn’t really believe it, but Scott wants to, and her words are what he wants desperately to be true. He closes his eyes, watches the sunspots dance across the back of his eyelids. “Probably."

 

The scenery hasn’t changed.

*

"We can’t just wait here to die." Allison’s voice is determined, and Scott knows that she’s going to do something, anything, because she’s been primed to fight battles, and waiting for an answer to appear isn’t in her nature.

 

Leaving the car is a mistake, but Scott would follow Allison anywhere. She takes her bow, and Isaac slings a bag of supplies over his shoulder, and they walk. 

 

Allison leads. Her footsteps are determined, steady and bold, and Scott never doubts her. 

 

Isaac keeps up with rangy strides, and Scott only glances back once, as the car disappears on the horizon behind them, a sunbeam glancing off a mirror like a laser.

 

They walk, walk, walk for what must be hours (his watch says it’s 3:31; same as when he woke up) and finally, finally, there’s something on the horizon.

 

"There!" Allison says, joyous, as she begins to run. They keep pace with her, not willing to let her fall behind, and then…

 

It’s Allison’s car, sitting where they left it. The mile marker in front of it is the same, the swirl in the dust where Scott had traced a stick during his watch is the same, everything is the goddamned same.

 

It’s impossible

*

Isaac insists that they go left, strike out into the underbrush.

 

He has a wild gleam in his eyes, and Scott thinks that despite the wide-open skies, despite the emptiness around them, he’s claustrophobic. Scott keeps touching him: a hand on his shoulder, brushing their shoulders together, grasping his hand tight enough that the bones creak.

 

They’re trapped, despite the lack of walls, and Isaac is holding onto himself by fraying threads.

 

Allison notices, takes his other hand as they set out into the scrub land. There are no tall trees, nothing but scraggly brush and sun-scorched dirt.

 

Nothing to interrupt the skyline.

 

The car is a speck in the distance behind them when Scott sees… something… moving in the distance.

 

He freezes, hair raised on the back of his neck, and he stares out at the movement with with a predator’s intent.

 

A growl rises, low and steady, from Isaac’s throat. 

 

Allison doesn’t hesitate. She drops Isaac’s hand, pulls out her bow, and fires into the distance. It falls short, but for a single second, the darkness is silhouetted against the bright azure sky.

 

It isn’t anything human, isn’t anything Scott can put a name to, but sends the same shiver through him as the waning moon.

 

The arrow falls short, and when Scott blinks, the shadow is gone.

*

Soon, the car appears on the horizon.

 

They’ve been walking towards it the whole time.

*

No one can sleep. Every time Scott closes his eyes, he sees the shadow. Allison has a grim, determined look, and Isaac looks haunted.

 

They sit on the trunk of the car, side by side. Scott is in the center, with an ankle hooked around Isaac’s to ground him, and Allison’s arm tucked around him, thumb tracing a slow circle against his hip.

 

The sun never changes. Allison’s got her bow on her lap, her defense against the strangeness of the world, her version of claws and fangs, and Scott knows even that, even his and Isaac’s darkest most violent impulses, couldn’t save them, if the darkness comes.

 

They sit and wait.

*

"There’s power in three," Scott says, staring at the clock on the dash. 3:32, the time reads, blinking the numbers steadily. The time had changed while no one was looking, and Scott stares at the mile-marker again.

 

Mile 33.

 

It can’t be that simple. It can’t be that impossible.

 

"Hmm?" Isaac raises his head. He’s resting his chin against the seat, watching Allison with languid eyes as she determinedly flicks through every radio channel, searching for something, anything.

 

"The druid murders," Scott says. Life before feels like years ago, not weeks, and the words are strange in his mouth. “Remember? Things happen in threes."

 

Allison looks between them, then follows his gaze back to the clock.

 

"So you think…" She gestures to the clock. Isaac reaches out, grabs both their hands. His are shaking.

 

"When it changes, drive like hell," Scott says. It’s a long shot, but the only idea he has.

 

It has to work. Has to.

*

Beacon Hills looms on the horizon.

 

Stiles is somewhere out there, somewhere in the madness that has encompassed the world, and Scott will find a way to bring him back.

 

Isaac is safe, tension falling away from him as the scenery changes, as the sun makes its slow path across the sky. As they’re freed from the endless open road and the infinite blue sky. Scott could let go of his hand, could safely set him adrift, but he doesn’t.

 

Allison doesn’t let go, either.

 

(There’s power in three.)


End file.
